


pushed from the precipice, clung to the nearest lips

by screamingcolours



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Elevators, First Kiss, M/M, Panic Attacks, by that i mean i just got inspired by the couples therapy thing really, ver very loosely based on the trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingcolours/pseuds/screamingcolours
Summary: “This is the absolute dumbest shit ever,” Bucky grumbles as he and Sam exit the small room.“I don’t know about that,” Sam says, clapping his shoulder. “The lady was kinda nice.”Bucky huffs, shrugging Sam’s hand off.“No shewasn’t. She was annoying, asking personal questions and getting all up in our business like that.”“That’s kinda the point of therapy, you know?”or: Sam and Bucky leave a forced therapy session. Only problem is, Bucky isn't a fan of confined spaces. That being the elevator. Which they have to use to get out of the building.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 177





	pushed from the precipice, clung to the nearest lips

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first work in this fandom, but i'm so excited about TFATWS i couldn't get these two out of my head! hope you enjoy!

“This is the absolute dumbest shit ever,” Bucky grumbles as he and Sam exit the small room.

The stale, dark gray walls have left a sour taste in Bucky’s mouth, especially paired with how oppressive the emptiness of the room had felt. He’s never been a fan of confined places, and it certainly hasn’t changed just because he’s been doing better. Sometimes it all just creeps up on him, crawling inside his veins and leaving an itch he never really knows how to scratch.

“I don’t know about that,” Sam says, clapping his shoulder. “The lady was kinda nice.”

Bucky huffs, shrugging Sam’s hand off.

“No she  _ wasn’t. _ She was annoying, asking personal questions and getting all up in our business like that.”

“That’s kinda the point of therapy, you know?”

“Which is exactly why this sucks. I mean, she asked us to talk about feelings and shit. Haven’t had to do that since Steve was still all skinny. You can’t tell me you possibly enjoyed that, did you?”

Apparently not bothered, Sam shrugs, saying, “wasn’t too bad” and moving on, just like that.

They round the corner of the hallway, Sam pressing the button to the elevator. Thank god, Bucky thinks. He can’t fucking wait to get out of here, even though he’s in no rush to get into this box. They were flown in, landing on the roof with only a couple sets of stairs to go down to reach their floor. They don’t have a choice but to take the elevator now, though.

That’s not exactly true; they could very well take the stairs, but Bucky would feel terrible letting Sam walk down 56 floors. After all, no matter how much he tries to be — and  _ is, _ Bucky reminds himself — a hero, Sam is still only human. It doesn’t make him lesser, because Sam is strong and resilient both in mind and body, and no matter what Bucky says, Sam’s one of the best fucking people Bucky has ever met, but he still tires faster than Bucky.

This is all Sharon’s fault for making them do this. If she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been stuck for god knows how long in this damn room with this random therapist, and they wouldn’t be about to spend a ride down 56 floors in the worst thing on the planet.

No one ever said Bucky wasn’t dramatic when he didn’t want to do something.

There’s a too loud  _ ding! _ and then the elevator opens in front of them.

“After you,” Sam says, with an exaggerated bow and a shit-eating grin on his face. Bucky just glares at him half-heartedly.

“No I mean, seriously,” Bucky goes on once they’re in the elevator, propping himself against the mirror.

It goes down far too slowly for Bucky’s taste. He watches the digits go down one by one. 56, 55, 54. He knows they need to be in protected buildings or whatever, but Jesus couldn’t they have made it so that there aren’t a hundred fucking floors? He’s exaggerating, again. There can’t be more than sixty floors, but in his opinion, it’s still way too many and way more than necessary.

With a gulp — he hadn’t realized his throat had closed up, but he ignores it, because it’s stupid and irrelevant — he looks back to Sam, who’s watching him strangely, a bit too intently.

“It’s stupid,” Bucky continues. “We should be out here doing things that matter. We could be helping people out, instead we’re forced to talk about issues that aren’t even there!”

“Hey, don’t shout at me, cyborg, I’m not responsible for that,” Sam counters, still looking at him.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Oh it’s always someone else’s fault, with you! It wasn’t your fault when we got caught by those bastards last year, and it wasn’t your fault when that bomb exploded in my face–”

“It  _ wasn’t!” _

“It was! You threw it the wrong way!”

“Okay, first of all, someone  _ shot me _ as I was throwing it, so pardon me if my aim was off. And secondly, it didn’t even hit your face,” Sam says more calmly. “Yeah, I can tell you, it’s still as ugly and annoying as it’s always been.”

“You’re ugly and annoying,” Bucky mumbles, but his eyes have strayed back to the digits on the wall.

39\. 38. 37. With all this technology everyone’s able to build out there, you’d think they’d be able to make a simple elevator go down faster. There is no reason this should be taking so long. To make matters worse, it’s getting way too hot in here, which shouldn’t be a thing because it’s the dead of winter and he knows it’s freezing cold outside. Not that he minds the cold at all, he’s practically immune to it at this point. His robot arm, as Sam likes to call it, doesn’t like it too much, but hey, he’s not his arm is he?

“Anyway.” He clears his throat. “This is dumb. This is dumb! I hate you, and you hate me–”

“Of course I do.”

“–and we’re being forced to do this thing together and I can’t believe I’m still letting poeple tell me what to do and this is dumb!” He knows he’s repeating the same thing over and over, but he can’t help it. 30, 29, 28.

“I think you should breathe, Buck,” Sam says, and Bucky frowns at him.

“What are you talking about, I’m breathing.”

It doesn’t feel like it, his chest heaving and his lungs too full and not enough at the same time, but Sam doesn’t have to know that. He doesn’t have to know that the palm off his right hand is getting sweaty and clammy, either.

“You know you’re not trapped in here, right?” Sam says. His voice sounds significantly softer, which is also really fucking unnecessary. Bucky doesn't need coddling.

“Obviously,” Bucky bites.

His heart rate shouldn’t be accelerating, should it? Sam is right. He’s not trapped. He walked in there on his own. The walls aren’t gonna turn to ice,  _ he’s _ not gonna turn to ice as an end result either. Fuck, he thought he’d left that behind. He did. But apparently winding up in a too-cramped elevator with the person he pretends to hate most on this planet is enough to make his brain go haywire and Jesus fuck it’s getting really hot and–

“Bucky,” Sam says, piercing through the veil of Bucky’s rising panic. Because that’s exactly what it is: panic. Bucky should know how to tame it by now, and technically he does, but he doesn’t think he can.

When Bucky looks up, he notices Sam is suddenly much closer to him. He doesn’t feel more trapped, though, even when a hand comes up to settle on his shoulder. His human shoulder, because Sam knows he’ll feel its grounding weight.  _ It’s working, _ his inside voice says.

“It’s just a stupid elevator taking us away from that dumb therapy session,” Sam says, which makes Bucky crack a weak smile.

“So, you admit it was dumb?”

As expected, Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m just trying to help, smartass, but if you’re gonna be like this I’ll just let you–”

“No,” Bucky hurries out, metal hand flying to Sam’s wrist on his shoulder when he starts moving back, away from him. “Please, I don’t–”

The words get stuck in his throat as he frowns down at where they’re connected together, trying to focus on that. He may pretend to hate Sam, and Sam may pretend just as much, but the truth is, they both know it’s a game. Even if neither of them will ever say it out loud. Bucky takes care of Sam’s wounds when he gets too injured to do it on his own, and Sam is always here to calm Bucky down with a touch of a hand on his skin.  _ Grounding. _

As if hearing his thoughts, Sam leans forward, his feet coming into contact with Bucky’s first, then his legs, similarly to how they were sitting in that room, knees and thighs touching ever so slightly. It's familiar, somehow, something Bucky can cling to so he doesn't fall into the abyss of his own mind.

“You’re alright,” Sam says softly, a breath away from Bucky’s face. “It’s just an elevator.”

Bucky nods, breathes out slowly. Clutches at Sam’s wrist harder, hoping he’s not hurting him too much. At the back of his mind, though, he knows he’s not too worried because he trusts that Sam would tell him if he were.

“I’m alright,” Bucky repeats, voice not as steady as he would like. He would cringe at how unconvincing he sounds if he felt present enough to process that information.

Instead all he  _ can  _ process are the walls still closing in on themselves around him and Sam’s hand on him and Sam’s eyes not leaving his and Sam’s face getting closer to his and–

Sam’s face is getting closer to his, like in slow motion, until Bucky can’t see it anymore. It blurs into nothing as Bucky’s senses get overtaken by surprisingly warm lips on his, barely pressing. It’s all he can think about then; the soft pressure against his lips, getting more insistent by the second, but not so much so that Bucky couldn’t get away if he wanted to. He doesn’t; instead he kisses back slightly, lets his mouth take over, everything around him forgotten.

This is definitely not familiar, but it’s far from unwelcome. It might be Bucky’s new goal suddenly to stay attached to Sam this way forever.

When Sam finally leans back, it takes Bucky a moment to open his eyes that he hadn’t realized had fallen shut. Sam's thumb is rubbing Bucky's shoulder where it meets his neck, which brings a smile to Bucky's face. 

It takes him even longer to notice the steadiness of the ground beneath his feet. His eyes flicker to the digits on the opposite wall; 1, it says, finally.

“Oh,” Bucky lets out.

In front of him Sam is smiling slightly, though Bucky can still make out the worried lines on his face. He could make fun of them, crack some joke about how Sam thinks too much for his own good, about how he always finds things to worry about where there’s nothing wrong. It would be easy, and it would make Sam both roll his eyes and make a quip back. They’d get out of this box and everything would be the same.

Thing is, Buck isn’t sure he wants things to remain the same. Not when Sam’s lips were just on his, so calming and comforting and promising.

“Thank you,” he says.

Sam blinks at the unexpected reply before squeezing Bucky’s shoulder, his own posture relaxing.

“Always,” he replies.

Bucky wants to say it’s too honest for such a simple word, but the sincerity of it is what gets the last knot in his body to untie, settling deep inside of him to let him breathe properly. If he lets it, he knows it has a high chance of taking root there, waiting to blossom into something even more important.

It’s something for future him to think about, though. Right now, he rolls his shoulders back, lets a real smile adorn his face, and looks Sam in the eye.

“Now let’s get outta here and get some lunch, what do you say? I’m starving.”

Sal does roll his eyes at that, but it’s fond instead of annoyed. And when his hand slides down Bucky’s arm, it lingers over Bucky’s hand, fingertips featherlight on his skin. Bucky takes it in his, linking his fingers with Sam’s.

He holds on to it on the whole way to lunch, and Sam doesn’t show any sign of wanting to let go, either.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!  
> comments/kudos are always much appreciated. tell me what you think!


End file.
